I was chatting with another member of a different forum about knives and we got into a discussion about Randall Knives and I promised that I would post up what I had for this fellow. I thought I would throw it up here if anyone had any interest on the topic.

This by far is my crown gem in my collection. This is a 'boot' knife that my father ordered when he was Lt. in flight school in the AF. Below is the correspondence between pop and W.D. Randall, Jr. Back in '57, $24.50 was a lot of money for a Lt. and he was proud to carry this knife his entire career as a pilot.

What he shared with me was that back in those days to pass flight school, one of the elements of it was they sent you on a survival mission, if you will. You had to jump out of a plane, parachute down into the ocean nearby an island of some sort. Swim ashore with your parachute in full flight gear with only a knife.

You had to survive for (I want to say it was 3 or 4 days) with only what you had. He was an Eagle Scout, so many aspects of this type of training came natural to him. Paracord and parachute to make a tent, snares for game, what insects to eat for specific nutrition, etc. This was that knife that he ordered to start this journey on what would be a long productive career. I have no idea if the AF still does this type of training? Sadly, I acquired this knife after he lost a 14 year battle to Alzheimer's.

Randall Knives are still made today and sell for $600 to $1,000 dollars. Last I checked, there was a waiting list with the caveat that members of the military go to the front of the line.

As always, thanks for reading.

Eric

Last edited by Virginian on 31 Aug 2012, 08:11, edited 1 time in total.